


Divide By Dinosaur Error

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Comics? What Comics?, Crossover, Gen, Pre-Jurassic World (2015), Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-08-20 19:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20233288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: A new Slayer turns up on Isla Nublar. Approaching her proves to be a difficult proposition.





	1. Divide By Dinosaur Error

**Author's Note:**

> Starting my usual drive-by-and-drop-a-few-stories for the annual August Twistedshorts Ficathon. Exhausting year, haven't had as much time to write as I wanted, but I've never forgotten where I got my crossover fanfic start. :)

Buffy smothered a yawn against the back of her hand, blinking blearily as the pilot's voice announced that they were finally on the ground, approaching the terminal at Juan Santamaría International Airport. Flying commercial was no fun for a Slayer, particularly a Slayer in her mid-thirties with half a lifetime's hard wear and tear behind her, but there was really no other quiet way to get where she was going. She might not have personally had to make with the crowd-blendage much in recent years, but it was still a time-honored hunting tactic.

She heard a series of beeps next to her as a device turned off airplane mode began receiving a string of messages, and turned her head to glance at her Watcher.

"So. What's the what? Is the new Slayer still on the island?" she asked, stretching carefully in her seat. Giles didn't often travel with her these days to find the new girls-- usually, that was Willow, or sometimes Faith or Dawn-- but he could do the heavyweight scholarly credentials thing really, _really_ well, in case they had to talk themselves into some place tourists normally weren't allowed.

"So Willow informs me," he replied, frowning intently at the small, rectangular screen of his smartphone. He still wasn't the biggest fan of technology, but the convenience and utility of Willow's growing collection of technomagic apps had finally convinced him to carry one.

"That's going on eight days now, huh. Either she's on the most expensive vacay ever, which means we're probably getting another Kennedy-type, or...."

"Or she's the daughter of a resident employee; or potentially an intern, any of which conditions might make approaching her a difficult proposition," Giles agreed.

"Kind of like old school for you, then," Buffy teased him, grinning at the dirty look he threw her in response.

How long had it been since a new Potential had turned up anywhere they didn't already have _some_ kind of contact, either through the existing Slayer network or one of the neutral demon communities? The mass Awakening during the fall of Sunnydale had sent shockwaves through the supernatural side of society for several years, but it had finally mostly settled out into a new equilibrium. Now, whenever new Potentials reached puberty and faced some kind of triggering event, they were swiftly found and much more easily brought up to speed than before. A significant percentage of them were even already aware of things that went bump-y in the dark, thanks to the Internet. No lurking in libraries and confronting girls with big scary tomes labeled Vampyr anymore!

Not that she had all that many stones to throw herself, now. Nearly two decades later, a lot closer to the age Giles had been then than the typical new Slayer, _Buffy_ was the authority figure griping about what the young'uns were putting her through. But this _was_ kind of a unique situation.

Jurassic World might have all the size and features of a resort town, but it was 180 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, too sunny and hot for vampires and too humid for a lot of other species, with its own small private army and security cameras _everywhere_. Plus, it had been built on an archipelago known locally as Las Cinco Muertes-- for good reason. Scrying the islands wasn't easy; Willow had made a joke about 'spooky action at a distance' that had had Dawn in stitches, but had creeped out everyone else. Consensus was that something big slept there that mostly kept other supernatural entities far, far away-- it was only humans and their creations that were dumb enough to ignore the warning. Really, the surprise wasn't that something had gone wrong with the first dinosaur park, it was that something bad hadn't happened to the second one in the decade plus since it had opened.

If the fact that a new Slayer had been called there meant anything, though, that might be about to change. Prophecy had gotten pretty muddled these days-- a wrinkle in the Powers' shorts that Buffy was mostly pretty happy about-- but it still had a way of steering Potentials about to wake into situations where their gifts might make a difference.

"For a definition of 'old school' that includes recreated examples of creatures last seen during the Primordium," Giles replied, dryly. "We should thank our lucky stars, I suppose, that InGen has yet to attempt to sequence demonic DNA."

Buffy had a bad, bad thought, and the hair stood up on the back of her neck as the plane's door opened and a breath of warm, humid air flowed up the aisle. "Never, ever mention that to Illyria. If she thinks she could get her army back that way...." 

The reconstituted Old One from Angel's team had mostly reconciled herself to the existence of humanity these days, especially since she had finally gotten her chosen Guide back, but _mostly_ was not _completely_, and who knew what InGen's geneticists might make out of the remains left behind in her old temple? She wouldn't be surprised to find that they had several Wolfram and Hart refugees on their staff as it was.

"I'll just pretend I didn't hear that, shall I," Giles shuddered, then put the phone away and shifted to retrieve his bag. "Speaking of horrifying thoughts. It'll be another hour or more to Puntarenas after we leave the airport, in addition to the ferry ride out to the island; it'll be several hours yet before we have a better idea what we're looking for."

"Cheer up, Giles. We're going to get to see actual dinosaurs! By which I do mean _dinosaurs_, and not the joke you'll carefully notice I'm not making." Buffy replied with a gentle nudge of her elbow. 

"So noted," Giles replied; then finally relented and gave her a fond smile. "It _is_ a rather old school Watcher-Slayer adventure, though, isn't it? Hopefully rather less traumatizing than some of our former encounters with ancient beings."

"Mood," she replied cheekily, then carefully retrieved her own bag and moved to follow the flow of humanity out into the Costa Rican sunshine.

* * *

Hours later, she turned wide eyes up at her Watcher, and wished they _had_ brought Willow along after all. They'd been forced to improvise to get into a restricted area, and what they'd found there...

Buffy stared out of the brush alongside the access road toward the big, octagonal building with the double-layered gates. "You jinxed us, didn't you. The Raptor Research Arena? Raptor, as in _velociraptors_? You're _sure_ she's in there."

Giles waved the smartphone again, open to the scrying app. "There's no uncertainty in the results; this close to the source, the spell is able to pierce through the interference enough to get a fix."

"_Velociraptors_," she objected again. The crash of the first park had been pretty hushed up at the time, and the T-Rex rampaging through San Diego four years later had been just background noise to her first head-on collision with fatal prophecy, but her dad had been fascinated with all the interviews that last summer she'd stayed with him. They were basically the Slayers of the dinosaur world.

She opened her mouth to repeat that out loud-- then paused, struck by another awful thought.

"Giles... do you see any teenagers here at _all_?" she said, eyeing the figures up on the catwalk. The youngest person she'd seen since they got there was a weedy guy in his twenties, and he was clearly pretty low on the totem pole; everyone else was in their thirties at least. No way could any of them secretly be a brand-new Slayer. "Because if there aren't any tourists, and I kind of doubt OSHA would approve staff bringing their kids around their pet murder-machines...."

"Buffy. You aren't suggesting...." Giles sucked in a sharp breath, staring back toward the paddock. 

Buffy furrowed her brow, then closed her eyes and paid closer attention to what she felt; she still made a pretty crappy sensor compared to some of the newer girls, but she was much, _much_ better than she'd been as a raw young Slayer, unable to tell one of her sisters from a demon while standing right in front of her.

There was definitely another Slayer in that building.

InGen famously bred all-female animals, so they could maintain control of each one from the moment it hatched until its death.

According to all the old interviews, raptors were lethal-- AKA adultish-- by about eight months.

Coincidentally, the pen looked like it had been there maybe a year?

And finally... InGen basically _was_ Mad Scientist Central these days. What if...? 

There'd supposedly never been a totally nonhuman Slayer, but there _had_ been more than a few with demonic ancestry; some Watcher research even suggested _all_ Slayers probably had at least a touch of predator in their background, the better to bond with the Slayer essence. Having met the original Shadow Men, Buffy really wouldn't be surprised if that were true. And if some black-hatted lab geek had decided to stir in some human DNA....

As if in answer to her line of thought, a loud, whistly-screamy sound issued from inside the complex, and a blue-striped form moved to stare back at her through both gates.

"I think I am," Buffy said, breath caught.

How was she supposed to explain Slaying to a _velociraptor_? Never mind that, how was she supposed to find a _Watcher_ for a velociraptor? Never mind _that_, what was she supposed to do about the fact that Jurassic World was apparently creating-- and enslaving-- sentient beings now?

"Divide by dinosaur error; can we start today over, please?" she said, plaintively.

"What was that you said earlier about jinxing us?" Giles replied, tone very dry.

Buffy gave him a dirty look, then stepped out onto the road; the way the raptor was staring and yelling, someone was going to come looking for whatever was upsetting her. So if they were going to have to make a 911 call to Willow anyway, better investigate a little more first.

"That we're living in interesting times?" she shrugged.

Well, no one ever promised life as a Slayer would be boring.


	2. Some Pretty Unusual Criteria

Owen hustled the two visitors into the Raptor Research Arena's on-site office, then followed them in and shut the door firmly behind them. They were supposed to be doing another full run-through of the pig hunt in an hour or so, and the way Blue had reacted to the pair who'd come walking up the access road, he wasn't sure that was a good idea any more. Distracted velociraptors meant the girls potentially not paying attention to all of Owen's commands, and he'd been stalling Hoskins about their progress long enough already; they really needed to show a success, or the security head might kick their failures up to Wu and get the project scrapped or put into other hands.

He'd put too much effort into protecting them, ever since he'd realized exactly how intelligent they actually were, to risk that happening now. And if Hoskins caught Blue ignoring him on surveillance footage in favor of a pair of strangers that Owen seriously doubted were authorized to be there-- if he caught Blue calling out to the woman with the tones she used for Owen and her sisters, rather than the ones she typically used for humans-- there might be more than a few awkward questions.

He took a seat behind his desk, then crossed his arms over his chest and stared at both of the unwelcome guests in turn. "You're not tourists; even the VIP wristbands don't let people into the research corridor," he accused them. "You're not InGen corporate; you don't look at everything you see like it has a price tag. You're not Operations staff or visiting scientists; I know Claire Dearing, and she's anal enough about crossing i's and dotting t's that I would _definitely_ have heard you were coming before you got here. So what _are_ you doing here? Corporate espionage? Some kind of 'free the dinosaurs' project?"

The pair exchanged a weighted look. The older one pinged like an Alan Grant-style scholar; aging past his prime, but still fit, with steel-gray hair, shrewd eyes, and callused hands. The younger one was probably more Owen's generation, though he'd never dare assume a lady's age; dirty-blonde hair pulled back in a messy but no doubt carefully-arranged ponytail, the kind of pricey but casual outfit that wouldn't be out of place in Claire's wardrobe, strappy little sandals showing off brightly-painted toes, and a gaze even sharper than her companion's. Despite the visual mismatch, there was years' worth of familiarity in their body language-- something more than familial but less than romantic, he thought. Like _pack_.

The woman finally sighed and met his gaze again, eyes as green as the grass in Gyrosphere Valley. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Well, I certainly won't believe you if you _don't_ tell me," he replied acerbically. "And if you try to go near Blue again without my approval-- if you go _anywhere_ other than right back up the access road-- you'll be explaining it to security instead."

The way she perked up at Blue's name told him that whatever was up with his best girl, it was definitely related to why they were there-- but the way her partner narrowed his eyes at the reference to the security forces told him that they weren't stupid, either.

"If you harbor such concern about our presence, then I wonder that you haven't informed them already," the man said, pursing his mouth slightly like a disapproving schoolteacher.

"Well, for one thing, I'd like to know who I'm calling them _on_," Owen replied dryly. Two could play at that game. They could just not tell him, of course; but then he would _definitely_ be calling security, and they knew it. Or they could keep on talking, and then he would know a little more than the nothing he had so far.

"Giles," the woman said firmly, laying a hand on her companion's arm.

She didn't need to do anything more than that to make her point clear; the note of command in her voice reminded him all over again of Claire, as if she was used to commanding an army in all but name, through constant challenges and ever-changing stakes. "It's no big. We need to talk to _someone_, and somehow I don't think it's gonna be her directly. Unless that whole incident with the horns--" she gestured around her face at that, as if she were sketching out a pair of Princess Leia buns, "--somehow taught you to speak Velociraptor?"

'Giles' met her gaze for a moment, then nodded resignedly. "Very well."

Then he turned back to Owen and held out a hand. "Dr. Rupert Giles. Formerly of the British Museum; currently headmaster of the Janna Kalderash International School for Girls. We're officially on the island to explore the possibility of a field trip for our students."

Owen raised his eyebrows, and shook; unsurprisingly, the man had a firm grip. "Owen Grady. Former US Navy; current head velociraptor trainer at the park. And you, ma'am?"

It was his other guest's turn to raise her eyebrows; clearly, she'd been expecting him to spend longer questioning her friend. To be fair, the guy did have surprisingly heavyweight credentials, and that 'official' reason was obviously nonsense. But Dr. Giles wasn't the one raising all the fine hairs on the backs of Owen's arms; it was the woman who'd given him an order like _she_ was the one in authority, here. Owen trained predators for a living; his instincts were rarely wrong, and they told him he should no more turn his back on her than he would Blue.

"Buffy Summers," she said, giving him a wry, assessing smile. Owen was even less surprised to find her grip as firm as Dr. Giles'. "Founder of the school. Which, incidentally, happens to have some pretty unusual criteria for attendance."

The hint wasn't subtle; she glanced back over her shoulder toward the door as she said it-- and somehow, he didn't doubt she meant it, too.

Damn it. He'd thought if anyone had a chance of blowing the whistle on him, it would be someone inside the park; how had complete strangers figured it out? "Dinosaurs in a school. Right. That's a funny one; or would be, if they weren't, you know, _animals_. Multi-million dollar zoo research animals, in fact, who would probably eat the other students when they got bored. No; tell me why you're _really_ here."

Ms. Summers frowned at him as if she were the one disappointed. "They're not just animals, though. At least, Blue isn't; if she's the one we saw at the gates. You have to know that, if you're the one who's in charge of training them."

Of course he knew that; but he was just one cog in a very large wheel. Owen wasn't buddy-buddy with Masrani, like say the geneticist whose work underpinned the entire money-making engine of wonder that was Jurassic World; nor did he occupy a sufficiently high rung on the corporate ladder, like Vic Hoskins. He wouldn't be able to do anything about it if either man realized what they had on their hands and inevitably tried to either exploit the girls-- or erase them and start over. They were _assets_ to most of InGen and Jurassic World's higher-ups; even Claire seemed to distance herself from them-- and all the other messy parts of existence while she was at it-- as much as she could.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said firmly, standing again to reach for the intercom interface. "And I think this interview has gone on long enough."

"Wait," Ms. Summers objected, climbing to her feet after him. "We're not threatening her, Mr. Grady. No one told us anything; we're not here because we _want_ anything. But she's-- special. It's a long story how we know, but-- she is. And you _know_ she is. We just want to, well, see her. Communicate with her, somehow. If she has human DNA like we think she does...."

"_Human_ DNA? But that's impossible." The rest of what she'd said definitely needed more investigation, too, but that was just--

\--well, a hell of a lot more plausible than he'd like to believe. Of all his girls, Blue was the only one who'd had empathy almost right out of the shell. Who he'd seen cry actual tears, which he'd wondered about; dinosaurs had largely evolved into birds, which didn't have tear ducts, and as far as he knew reptiles only used theirs to cleanse their eyes, not to express pain or emotion. But Blue _did_. 

"...They told me she was created with DNA from a black-throated monitor."

"Are these the same _they_ whom you apparently don't wish to know how intelligent she is?" Mr. Giles interjected. "Mr. Grady; we realize that this isn't our turf, and there's quite a bit involved here that we aren't aware of. But there is a lot of relevant information that you don't have, either. And the organization we're a part of is actually quite a bit bigger than a school. If you need assistance to ensure the safety of your charge...."

"Look. Is there somewhere more private we can talk?" Ms. Summers added.

Owen opened his mouth, then shut it again, mind racing. Hoskins would be there in less than an hour. The team outside was expecting a demonstration. Blue and her sisters were expecting a show and a reward. Of course he wanted to know what else they knew, what exactly they wanted to do about it, and what it was going to cost him; but he couldn't leave yet.

"In an hour, maybe. Not now. You got a short version you can tell me?"

Dr. Giles and Ms. Summers exchanged another heavy glance... then Ms. Summers picked up the cast metal dinosaur on the corner of his desk, and _casually pretzeled it with her hand_.

He was still gaping at the display when Dr. Giles added his two cents. "Mr. Grady, this world is older than even you know."

Well, with an opening like _that..._

Owen sank back into his chair, thinking again about everything that made Blue different. And made a choice.

"Okay," he said. "I'm listening."


End file.
